Herman Cain’s bid for the presidency was pronounced dead Saturday, sagging into single-digit poll numbers under the weight of four allegations of sexual harassment, an additional accusation of an extramarital affair and growing voter unease over his lack of clarity on key issues.

His campaign was 28 weeks old.

But Iowans who knew Cain’s campaign well say the symptoms that brought on its untimely death were present from its birth: The campaign mishandled events, broke commitments and failed to close Cain’s knowledge gaps.

Cain, a retired Georgia businessman, said as president he would surround himself with the right people who knew such issues and could advise him well. However, he chose as his campaign manager someone who had been banned from politics in his home state and made a bizarre ad that called more attention to himself (and his cigarette) than the candidate.

When a string of scandals and missteps veered his campaign off course in recent weeks, Cain lacked the kind of disciplined organization to respond and right itself.

“With some campaigns, it’s one thing that really sinks a campaign. With others, it’s a combination,” said Tim Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa. “I think that’s what’s going on here.”

With but one failed Senate race under his political belt, Cain, 65, first and foremost branded himself as the job-creating, problem-solving, 9-9-9-tax-cut-touting CEO that an economically shaken America needed in the White House.

In “This is Herman Cain! My Road to the White House,” his book released in October, the candidate tells of his successful career as a businessman at Godfather’s Pizza and other corporations. He describes the philosophy that brought him up the corporate ladder, perhaps most tellingly in “Chapter 4: Mathematics to Pepperoni.”

“Had I anticipated (unexpected obstacles) up front, I might have lost sight of my dream,” Cain writes. “Instead, I focused on the problems as they came to light. That’s what CEOs do all the time: solve problems so that they can move on — and stay focused.”

The philosophy that Cain found successful in the business world — stay focused on the goal, don’t anticipate certain problems or negative outcomes — proved damaging when a series of unexpected events roiled his campaign.

Staffer: Cain let problems linger

Cain’s Iowa effort began as early as December 2010. E-mails between Iowa volunteers and staffers obtained by The Des Moines Register suggest a campaign that faced troubles with basic organization.

In the messages, volunteers and aides accuse one another of mishandling campaign schedules, taking undeserved credit for Cain’s appearances and creating a hostile work environment some say Cain failed to address.

Testimony in an Iowa unemployment case of a former staffer late this summer contains accusations that managers in Cain’s campaign tried to conceal an adviser’s homosexuality after it “had become an issue” with some supporters.

“Mr. Cain’s answer to all issues was ignoring them,” one e-mail reads, saying it was “very difficult to work for him.”

Despite the signs of campaign dysfunction, Cain captured third place, with 10 percent, in the Register’s June Iowa Poll. Many Republican activists saw Cain as poised for momentum.

But in early July, campaign staffers’ frustrations came to a head. Both Cain’s Iowa director, Tina Goff, and straw poll coordinator, Kevin Hall, quit, citing Cain’s lack of appearances in Iowa. Charlie Gruschow, one of Cain’s earliest Iowa organizers and an influential tea party figure, joined the exodus. A regional director and New Hampshire staffer left the same week.

After Hall’s departure, a judge awarded him unemployment benefits, ruling he resigned only after the campaign tried to include him in its alleged cover-up of the gay aide’s role and changed the conditions of Hall’s job.

After that, the campaign maintained just four staffers in its Iowa office, and Cain made infrequent appearances in the state.

Of the 69 events Cain attended in Iowa, 32 took place before May 21, when Cain officially declared his candidacy. In the summer months leading up to the Iowa straw poll in August, Cain spent 12 days in the state. Straw poll winner Michele Bachmann, who announced her campaign a month after Cain, spent 22 days in Iowa during the same period.

After placing fifth in the straw poll, Cain avoided Iowa for more than two months.

Campaign is unorthodox, but he surges in polls

His surprising win at a Florida straw poll in late September, however, unleashed a surge of voter attention toward a candidate whose wit and charm play well on TV. In weeks, Cain shot to the top in some national polls, neck and neck with perennial front-runner Mitt Romney.

Cain spent much of his surge in the South, promoting his book instead of appearing in early states. The campaign called it a nationally focused strategy. Many analysts called it crazy.

“(T)hey don’t know our strategy,” Cain said. “And it’s not the one that they want to impose on us.”

Overseeing this unorthodox strategy was “a mad man by the name of Mark Block,” Cain told the Register. “The man is insane, but he’s now one of my closest friends, and he’s my chief of staff.”

It was Block who more than anyone guided the surge of Cain’s campaign — and its seemingly on-the-fly strategy.

After Block smoked his way into the media spotlight in a viral campaign video, reporters took a peek into the Wisconsinite’s past: He spent three years banned from managing campaigns in his home state after accusations that he illegally aided a judge’s re-election effort.

One e-mail obtained by the Register talks about a promise Block made to focus on Iowa before “it soon became clear” that Block “had no intention of honoring that agreement.”

Several “major town hall meetings” in Iowa that Block touted in October to the National Review never occurred.

Cain, whose Senate campaign focused heavily on his strictly pro-life stance, also damaged his standing with social conservatives when he gave a series of muddy answers on abortion.

“What Herman needs to do is get his organization caught up with his poll numbers,” Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent social conservative from Sioux City said in late October.

When Cain edged out Romney for the top spot at 23 percent in the Oct. 30 Iowa Poll, however, it seemed hard to argue with Block’s methods.

Sexual accusations, plus Libya flub

Within hours, the first of a series of blows staggered the new front-runner’s campaign. It never fully recovered.

Politico reported Oct. 31 that two women, former colleagues of Cain’s at the National Restaurant Association, received money in the 1990s after they alleged he had sexually harassed them.

Cain initially denied remembering the payouts, then later said he did recall an accusation by one woman.

Cain and his aides also blamed the accusations on an aide of fellow GOP candidate Rick Perry as well as “the Democrat machine.” The flurry of finger-pointing and contradictory statements heightened the campaign’s disorganized image.

Initially, many of his supporters, distrustful of Politico and other media that were reporting on the scandal, flocked to the candidate’s defense and increased financial support.

Then came Cain’s paused-filled ramble on a question about Libya during a Nov. 14 editorial board meeting. Video of his nonanswer spread rapidly online, fueling questions about his knowledge of foreign policy.

During his trip to a Dubuque café the next day, his first Iowa visit since the sexual harassment allegations surfaced, Cain did not address either controversy head-on. The campaign’s unorthodox operations, or simply disarray, continued. It didn’t notify press about the event except through Twitter. The campaign’s website didn’t list the event.

The next week, on Nov. 22, an influential group of Iowa social conservatives, the Family Leader, announced it wouldn’t endorse Cain, a Baptist minister, citing a lack of clarity on “issues of life, marriage, foreign policy, and presidential readiness.”

Accusation of affair becomes last straw

Then came the clincher: A woman named Ginger White came forward on Monday to claim she had a 13-year extramarital affair with Cain.

Cain said it was a 13-year friendship in which he gave White money to help her make ends meet. Cain’s wife of 43 years, Gloria, didn’t know about the relationship or the financial aid.

Cain’s Iowa staffers said they learned about White, like everyone else, through news coverage. Block visited the Iowa headquarters on Thursday to assure them the campaign was “full steam ahead.”

Throughout November, the philosophy that had served Cain so well in the corporate world — stay focused, don’t anticipate distractions — played out to disastrous results. Cain failed to anticipate obstacles from his past until they “came to light,” rattling his campaign and distracting its focus.

On Friday, the Register published results of a new Iowa Poll showing Cain’s support had fallen to 8 percent from a high of 23 percent five weeks earlier.

“You have to know all the issues, foreign, domestic, everything,” said respondent Carol Bohlen, 61, a retired Fort Dodge resident. “I just feel there’s too much coming out about his past, and I don’t think that would be very presidential.”

By that afternoon, he scheduled Saturday’s press conference, where he announced the suspension of his campaign and his plans to endorse another candidate.

As a successful businessman, Cain put no stock in anticipating obstacles. As a candidate, not doing so proved fatal.

— Jennifer Jacobs and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Herman Cain looks off into the sunset in an image advertising the Dec. 3 rally where he suspended his campaign. (HermanCain.com)